


and if you'll let me stay

by philthestone



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, It's Missing Them Hours, my brands: niche kidfic and obscure aus where i refuse to expand upon the plot, thats my only excuse for this, this is such an old snippet but i found it again and am in love with it, we were robbed of peter and gamora fulfilling their comfortable lived-in married power couple energy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25383142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: "I like that you've taught me how to be a good liar," Gamora says. He's pulled her close, and stopped with the twirls, but it's more a subconscious, easy bid to be closer to her than it is a calculated decision to avoid drawing attention to themselves."You're gettin' pretty good at it," says Peter, his eyes glinting.
Relationships: Gamora/Peter Quill
Comments: 16
Kudos: 35





	and if you'll let me stay

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally part of a larger fic that was /meant/ to be 4 aus where gamora learns how to pull a con, but i pretty much just ended up loving this one segment and the rest of the fic never happened. it's old and i'd almost completely forgotten it existed but then maya gave me a claire/jamie spy au prompt and i was like WAIT REMEMBER WHEN I WROTE THIS
> 
> so i found it and brushed it up and am finally and hugely happy w the result. title is from leo sayer's "you make me feel like dancing" and reviews are love! hope u guys enjoy!

It’s a fairly run of the mill job, at this point.

Gamora thinks this is a pretty testament to her new life. In an artful twist, her profession has not _really_ changed, only a mild promotion taking place; rather than stealing people’s lives, she is stealing their billion-unit’s worth of jewelry. 

Love is the wrong word for this new thing she does. But she does _like_ it a whole lot. 

She pauses, by one of the tall fountains that’s spouting some liquid actually glittering like rainbows, and twirls the long-stemmed glass in her hand. Her neck tingles at the back where her hair doesn’t cover it; jobs like these always require concessions to fit in that leave awkward vulnerabilities. Her exposed throat, for example, the fault of a shimmery silver dress that falls to her ankles and does little to cover the thin impractical heels on her feet.

Peter very much likes the easy access to her collarbone, but he’s not yet here to take advantage of it. Gamora waits, and counts: _one, two, three_. Like she would before, taking out marks. 

(This is not quite the same thing. Similar, though. She’s learning the fine art of lying without actually saying anything; lying has always been a skill she needs to work on.)

On cue, in her ear: _“Hey, are you okay? Aw, you don’t look so good, lemme help you siddown somewhere, sweetheart.”_

Another count: _one, two, three_. It’s almost muscle memory, by now. 

_“There we go -- hey, hey, I’ll go get some help, okay?_ ”

The corner of her mouth ticks; she’s come to be familiar with it, by now, the way his peculiar accent thickens when he’s focused on a mark. 

The mental catalogue she has of him supplements the _ands_ \-- when he’s drunk, when he’s worked up, when she lets him take advantage of that collarbone access. Gamora sways a bit on the spot, posture comfortable -- becoming more comfortable with each job they pull together -- eyes tracing the balcony above her. A smile curls at her lips. “Cameras still off-angle,” she murmurs, practiced.

Peter’s voice sounds again, smug this time: “ _Piece of cake, baby_.”

“ _These dumbasses have terrible security for one of the fancy-shamnciest shin-digs this side of the galaxy,”_ comes Rocket’s voice, derisive. To be fair, Rocket’s voice is usually derisive. Gamora smirks.

“Try one of the shin-digs most associated with a genocidal psychopath.”

“ _Ain’t it so fun to steal from a-holes? Sheesh, rich people are dicks already, an’ these idiots go and fund a whack-job who killed off half a planet._ ”

Her next inhale is thin, tense. Deflection, too, is an art -- and always easier than thinking about the exact events that have landed her where she is. 

“Focus on the datachip,” Gamora says, her lips hardly moving.

“ _Yeah, and that thing’s embedded in a billion unit diamond necklace. Un-frickin’-believable_. _I don’t even feel bad._ ”

_“I am Groot.”_

_“I do too feel bad_ sometimes _.”_

“ _Yeah right, Rocket_.” 

Peter had called it something -- compared them to a famous outlaw from his home planet, another person who stole from the more fortunate for the less. A fox, maybe like Rocket, if she recalls correctly. She tries to focus on this, and ignore the memory of ice drenching her insides, trapped inside the Kyln, at the news that Ronan had reached Xandar. At the realization that Thanos had found one of the stones, and she had run away without trying to stop him, foolish enough to think she was finally free of it all. 

“Focus,” she says, into her mic, without much force. 

_“Stones are set to come out checkpoint two, Rocket.”_

_“Yeah, yeah, Drax’ll be there. Lady dumbass didn’t notice nothin’, huh?”_

_“I am Groot.”_

_“Are you kiddin’? Those laxatives were strong enough to take even Drax out.”_

_“I am famously hard to take out with diarrhea!”_ booms Drax’s voice, patently enthusiastic, in their earpieces. Gamora resists the urge to purse her lips in an exasperated fashion; it would draw attention.

She turns, intent on floating out of the ballroom towards their rendezvous point, but is stopped by a warm pair of hands at her waist. 

Only sheer familiarity stops her from breaking his arm on instinct. 

“You have got to stop doing that,” she breathes, as Peter slides his arms around her and pulls her easily into the people mingling across the dance floor.

“You were standin’ in place too long,” he says in way of response, lips pressed against the shell of her ear. His mouth is hot against her skin; she is carefully in control, and does not shiver, but it’s nice to know she _could_ if she wanted to. 

“I will move around some more, next time,” Gamora says, very close to Peter’s neck. Professionalism is paramount, of course. But, sometimes -- one takes advantage of certain good things. 

“Aw, I just wanted an excuse to dance with you,” says Peter, twirling them around. 

“Incorrigible.” Gamora pushes herself closer to him, carefully focused on the crowd around them, the cameras, the weight of the Godslayer against her thigh under her low-neckline shimmery dress. “The mark?”

“I don’t think I’ll be dancing with _her_ anytime soon.” She feels his clever fingers at the very edge of her hip, twisting _just_ so.

As she said -- familiarity. Another smile curls at her mouth, unbidden.

“Are you sure it won’t fall out?”

“High-grade adhesive,” he says, swaying her on the spot, other hand sliding dangerously low on her back. “And it blends in with the dress, you know.”

“I do know,” says Gamora, eyes flicking back up to the balcony, then, finally, down to Peter’s face. She focuses on the soft way his mouth is crooked upwards, and raises her eyebrows.

“It’s a nice dress,” he mouths at her, genuine, and then twirls her under his arm.

It’s easy to dance with him, in this nice venue, amongst these wealthy elite who don’t care enough to recognize a motley assortment of former criminals even as those same elite unwittingly enable the evils that have always pulled the strings of Gamora’s life. She almost likes this part of her new existence, the cheek of the lie that hurts the people hurting others. It makes the thrill of completing the job -- delivering the stolen data to Xandar’s underground rebellion tomorrow -- all the better.

“ _Rendezvous in five. I’ll get the ship, ‘cause I do everythin’ around here.”_

_“I am Groot!”_

_“Groot and I have indeed acquired the many diamonds!”_

The strings have lessened, these past few years. And the venue _is_ nice, possibly the nicest they’ve ever hit, and it’s not even that late into the night and Gamora stops, for a second, to consider how good they’ve gotten at this. Her ears catch the _click_ of her impractical heels against the floor; her eyes trace the high ceiling, the glittering fountain. They stop again at Peter’s face, expression carefully schooled into the fluid movement of this evening’s lie even as his bright eyes glitter at her, open and warm.

She’s still learning some of the finer details of pulling a con. It’s a new feeling, learning something at her own pace.

She likes it.

“What?” says Peter. His mouth is just slightly too-slack.

Gamora hums. “How long do we have until extraction?”

“ _Extraction_ ,” he mouths, in a register only slightly lower than the one she just used. He looks amused at the technical accuracy of the term. There are some things, of course, that she has not grown out of. Then he says, “t-minus three.”

“Hmmm.” 

“So?”

“I like that you’ve taught me how to be a good liar.” 

Fluid -- vague enough that it can pass as harmless flirtation to any overhearing ears. Peter raises an eyebrow. _One_.

“Yeah?”

“Mmm. Skillset wise.” It’s easier to get out than she thought it would be. “Other things -- I learned -- before. This one’s new.”

“Uh huh.” A twirl, without his usual flourish. _Two_. “You’re gettin’ pretty good. Got all these guys fooled.”

“Never with you, though,” she says, slipping it under the evening’s layers of dishonesty. “You know?”

 _Easy_ , Gamora thinks again, as Peter whispers into her ear: “Well, I’ve always been pretty bad at lyin’ to you too.” 

They’d agreed the other day that Gamora’s bullshit meter was critical to their continued survival, but this -- in the gold-blush crystalline colours of the billionaire ballroom -- is different. She wonders if this counts as making the few things left unspoken spoken. 

_Three._

They slip off of the dance floor with minimal hassle, hand-in-hand like lovers escaping a party for a clandestine tryst, charged and full of life with the knowledge of each other. When they get to the ship and the shooting starts (the shooting always has to start at _some_ point), Gamora watches Peter and Rocket yell at each other and revels in the truth of that escape, in all the ways that count.


End file.
